BARCELONA—HTC is simplifying. The smartphone company last month announced a plan to radically cut down the number of models it releases, and today at Mobile World Congress it's rolling out its three major Android phones for 2012: the HTC One S, X and V. I spent some quality time with them and came away impressed, but powerful partners could still kill HTC's branding revolution.

First, about S, X, and V: They're supposed to be the HTC One S, X and V everywhere in the world. No matter what carrier you buy them on, you're supposed to be able to buy an HTC One S, X or V. Are you starting to see the problem? If you haven't figured it out yet, I'll get to that later. First, the phones.

The HTC One X, pictured at the left, coming to AT&T, is the big one. This is a monster with a 4.7-inch screen; I think it's a hand-buster, but I hate those super-huge phones. It's well-designed for something with gigantism, though. Its standout feature is the 1280-by-720 Super LCD 2 screen, which is almost entirely non-reflective, looks great even outdoors and seems to bring the image right to the front, with no glass layer visible between you and the screen. It really pops. The white plastic body is solid and clearly made from the highest quality materials, with a big silver bullseye on the back for the camera.

The One X runs Android 4.0 with HTC's Sense, a software overlay that I've always liked but that some folks now criticize as unnecessary. It's certainly lighter on the land than it has been on previous versions of Android, not altering the base UI too much and not heavily altering the built-in PIM apps. HTC's attractive widgets, including its clock widget, are still available, and some UI elements are improved—for instance, multitasking now involves flipping through a Cover Flow-like set of screenshots.

HTC has a new image-processing chip which works wonders on the One X's camera: This thing is fast. The company told me it autofocuses in 0.2 seconds and goes shot-to-shot in 0.7. I took a bunch of pictures indoors and out and the f/2.0, 8-megapixel shooter was very fast, although not infallible; I got one blurry photo taken before the autofocus locked in. HDR mode was a special treat, much, much faster than I've seen on other phones like HTC's Amaze 4G. With HDR on, I could take a photo with a bright background, have it balance out the foreground and background, and not have to wait several seconds for it to assemble. Another neat trick: you can shoot pictures in the middle of capturing a 1080p HD video without missing a beat. The phone has a 1.3-megapixel front camera, too.

Another new feature here: An entirely proprietary Wi-Fi display system called "Media Link HD" which works with a dongle HTC will sell for an as-yet-unknown price. Plug the dongle into your TV, swipe three fingers up on your One X screen, and the TV will mirror your phone wirelessly, including games and videos.

The One X Comes with Beats Audio inside and Beats headphones too. And while the global version of the One X will be a quad-core phone with Nvidia's Tegra 3 processor running at 1.5GHz on board, AT&T's LTE version uses a Qualcomm S4 instead. I benchmarked the dual-core, 1.5GHz S4 as faster than a 1.2GHz Tegra, so it'll compete. The phone also has 32GB of storage on board and an 1800mAh battery, both sealed in and non-expandable.

That's a lot to process, isn't it? The HTC One X is a flagship statement from a company that clearly wants to take the momentum back from Samsung as the premiere provider of Android phones. It's huge, elegant, and stuffed full of new technologies and software ideas designed to make things easier. It's coming out on AT&T within the next few months, and it'll probably cost $299 with contract—that's my guess, not HTC's word.

T-Mobile's HTC One S, And the One With the Chin HTC's One S, pictured at the right, is the middle child, and it's actually my favorite. This one is coming to T-Mobile. The One S is a smaller phone, about the width of an HTC Sensation but a little taller—in other words, totally usable in one hand. I can't believe I just described a phone with a 4.3-inch screen as "smaller," but that's what these 4.7-inch mega-phones do to you. The One S has a very attractive 4.3-inch, 960-by-540 Super AMOLED screen. It brings very saturated colors and deep blacks, but the pentile subpixel arrangement very slightly stipples some areas in a way that annoys people with extremely sharp eyes. Others won't notice.

The One S is a super-slim phone at 7.9mm, with a cool gray aluminum body. It'll use Qualcomm's dual-core S4 processor, and the T-Mobile model will run on the carrier's HSPA+ 42 network. It has the same rear camera as the One X, with a VGA front camera. It has 16GB of memory, and there's still no memory slot; like the One X, this is a unibody design. Ice Cream Sandwich is here just like on the other two phones, as well as Beats Audio. Beats headphones will probably be included, as will Media Link HD.

Held in the hand, this phone is pure elegance. I like how the Sense UI widgets give a little more humanity to Android's cold interface. The phone feels fast, and the body materials are top-notch. Compared with the One S, Samsung's Galaxy S II on T-Mobile is big and bulky, and probably no more capable.

So what of the HTC One V? It's the one with the chin. This design element is going to generate some strong opinions: the V has a big ol' chin jutting down below its 3.7-inch screen, just like the old HTC Legend did. The One V is HTC's affordable device, coming to regional carriers like MetroPCS around the end of the second quarter. Yep, it still has Ice Cream Sandwich.

The specs here aren't stunning, but the body is well built and the whole thing looks elegant – as long as you're okay with that chin. The One V has a 3.7-inch, 800-by-480 Super LCD screen; it's a bit more reflective than the Super LCD 2 on the other phones, and you can see the glass in front of the image. It's running a 1Ghz, single-core Qualcomm S2 processor, and has 4GB of storage with no memory card slot. It has Beats Audio, but doesn't come with Beats headphones.

Some of HTC's new innovations are still here, though: the new image chip works with the One V's 5-megapixel camera, although picture processing is much, much slower than it was on the One X; it took my One V a few seconds to assemble an HDR image that the One X handled nearly instantly.

HTC's Worst Partners HTC wants to simplify: it wants you to be able to buy a One S, a One X, or a One V on several different carriers.

But HTC's new branding strategy could pretty quickly be torpedoed by U.S. carriers, who demand unique names and slightly different specs for every phone so that devices can't be easily compared across carriers.

Other than the Apple iPhone, the one great example of a phone that crossed all carriers was the LG Optimus One, which was sold as the Optimus on at least six different carriers, but as the Vortex on Verizon and the Phoenix on AT&T. Samsung's Galaxy S II, another attempt at cross-carrier branding, has been saddled with the unfortunate moniker of "Epic 4G Touch" on Sprint and turned down by Verizon entirely. The iPhone is the only phone that the carriers don't make more confusing.

That's the big question with these very nice phones. HTC has always had the potential to match Apple's focus on design and elegance, but last year it had an overly complex product line. Will its carrier partners saddle its new phones with hideous names and unfortunate bloatware? Let's hope not.

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 9 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts of the daily PCMag Live Web show and speaks frequently in mass media on cell-phone-related issues. His commentary has appeared on ABC, the BBC, the CBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, and in newspapers from San Antonio, Texas to Edmonton, Alberta.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer, having contributed...
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